Aspirations and Hikes

Yet again, my morning went as it usually goes. I woke up, showered and got dressed for class. I got to the ILR library before class to study again, as the test date is pressing on us. After about one hour and a half of studying Amelia, Abe, Benjamin, and I went to Trillium for some lunch before class.

Abe and Benjamin both speak French. Abe is from Canada and Benjamin is from Belgium. Throughout lunch, they both attempted to teach me phrases I was curious to know. Needless to say, I need to work on my accent. Still, I'm glad I got to meet people to fluent and willing to teach me. Hans joined us at the end of lunch, and by then it was time to go to class.

When I arrived to class, I noticed we had about 4 extra people in the hall. All of them were from Cornell's debate team, because we were supposed to have an example of Worlds debate. Because they were short on people, my professor, Sam, and one of the best female debaters, Alex, were their own teams. Worlds typically requires 8 people that speak for 7 minutes each. The resolution or proposition was that health care in the United States should be free for everyone. Everyone got 15 minutes to prep, even the students. Amelia and I wrote down a bunch of cons and pros that there could be to the argument. One of the biggest pros was that if everyone had health care, people would receive preventative health care instead of only going to the emergency room when they needed it the most. The con was that, it would be difficult to pay for and free health care only works in small countries.

It was interesting to see how fast they wrote down notes, and the points of information they all had to offer or ask while someone spoke. It was definitely fast paced, in my opinion. But, what stood out the most to me was that when it was Alex's turn to be in opposition, she was very confident and didn't seem bothered by the shots that were fired at her by the other teams. She always knew how to answer a question and continue with her speech. Maybe someday I'll be able to be speak like that too. We ended class with Sam reading some comments that he received from his class last semester. Many of them made us laugh, because they accurately represented how things were going for us.

Group of friends on the trail

After class, I went up to my dorm to read and then went to dinner a little after 5 PM. I don't typically eat dinner this early, but today we were going to hiking club at 6 PM, and I wanted to be fed by then. When it was time, we left the RPCC and went to the meeting point, which was the Balch arch. Wei, a Cornell student, was waiting there with a group of other summer college students. At first, I wasn't too excited about the way we were walking. Afterwards, I was very glad about going on that hike, because the view was gorgeous and it was only one mile long. My friends and I took advantage of the scenery and took multiple pictures.

Everyone was busy studying today, since some people have tests tomorrow. So, I went up to my room continued with note-taking and reading. Later on, when people got work done, we went to check out the Karaoke club. We only sang one song but it wasn't too fun so we decided to call it a night.

A very green Beebee Lake